Are my eye’s deceiving me?
I just saw the following results in Adwords and if I could work out how I did it I could be very rich!
Take a look at this screen shot.
Notice anything strange?
Look closely.
How many clicks did it take me to get the conversion?
Yes, you’ve got it. It took me NO clicks to get the conversion.
So the price of my conversion is ZERO.
Imagine how much I could save if I could do that with all my campaigns 
If Only…
If only this were true.
You see what’s happening here is all about timing.
These results were for just one day and quite early in the morning (hence why there were so few impressions).
The results you see in your Adwords accounts are not real time. To make things even more confusing, clicks and impressions are reported quicker than conversions.
There can be a few hours lag between the time a click or impression happens and the time you see it reported in your account.
With conversions it can take up to 24 hours.
Did you notice this lightly greyed text at the bottom of your Adwords results?
Light grey text on a light grey background. Anyone would think they were trying to hide it!
So can I trust my Adwords Results?
Yes, you can. You just need to remember that there is a lag. Don’t be fooled into comparing one day’s click/conversion rates because they are likely to be mixed up days.
Remember what you are always trying to see if the overall pattern of click through rate and conversion rate. So you should examine your results over a period of time (eg: a weeks worth of data).
Does anyone else have any examples of strange reporting?
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